by Will Wight
“You think safety is one of the values I hold most dear, do you?”
Cassias stabbed a finger in the direction of the exit, assuming Eithan could see it. “The Black Dragon Trials were designed for a team of five Lowgolds, all trained to work as a unit. They were supervised by the elders of the family, who would call off the Trials or order breaks for the participants, as necessary.”
“I seem to recall reading about that, yes.”
Cassias longed to break something in his frustration, but his training and upbringing only allowed him to grow more stiff. His back straightened, his jaw tightened, and the grip on his sword hilt whitened his knuckles. “The Jai are strangling us. We cannot throw away recruits when we’re short on manpower as it is. Not to mention the sheer time and expense it must have taken to open this place back up and power the Trials. Underlord, this is irresponsible to the point of negligence.”
It was the most openly he’d ever contradicted Eithan, but Cassias couldn’t say he was sorry. Eithan had finally cleared his way to marry Jing, and Cassias would always be grateful, but he couldn’t watch the man run his family off a cliff.
Eithan turned his head, looking into the darkness, and his whole demeanor seemed to shift.
Cassias knew that Eithan had grown up in Blackflame City, but they had never met. He’d never even heard of Eithan Arelius until six years ago, when the man stumbled through a portal to the other side of the world. Already an Underlord.
Life and blood artists beholden to the family had confirmed that he wasn’t far past thirty. That was partially what had created such an impact in the Blackflame Empire: Underlords so young were not unheard of, but they were rare as phoenix feathers. Eithan had the potential to advance to Overlord, a stage that only the Emperor, Naru Huan, had currently reached.
During the time Cassias had known him, Eithan had behaved like a child playing with toys, like a rich man indulging his idle whims, like a genius in the grip of his eccentricities, and—very occasionally—like a powerful and dignified Underlord.
But now Cassias found himself watching a new side of Eithan. He looked weary. Uncertain.
It shook Cassias more than he cared to admit.
“We settle for so little,” Eithan said at last. “We protect what we have instead of reaching for more. Even when the door is open, we refuse to walk through it.” He clenched a fist in front of him. “Cassias, I can take this family through that door. I can drag the rest of them, kicking and screaming, into a future better than you or I could ever imagine.”
He sighed, and his arm dropped back to his side. “But I can only see so far. I think these two could be the sails that carry us far beyond this empire…but what if I’m wrong? I could squeeze this family dry, betting on a glorious payout fifty years from now, and the Jai could devour us tomorrow.
“I feel blind.”
Speechless, Cassias sat with Eithan in the silence. And the endless dark.
Chapter 12
The five caves dug into the side of the black cliff were each identical. They were just deep enough to provide shelter from the rain—though not the wind—and they were stocked with a single reed mat and blanket each.
Yerin took the first one they came across, stabbing her row of swords into the soil outside the cave’s mouth so that they would start gathering aura. Lindon had no need to do anything of the sort—the vital aura was thick with the power of Blackflame here. He felt like he would harvest it if he took a deep enough breath.
After placing his pack into the cave next to Yerin’s, Lindon went into the other three caves and gathered the extra mats and blankets, bringing them back to his cave. Might as well have spares. Then, together, he and Yerin explored their basin.
It didn’t take them long. They were restricted to an alcove against the side of the mountain containing the five caves, a waterfall and pond, and twenty-four dark, thorny bushes with black-veined red berries that burned to the touch.
The pond and waterfall were warm and tasted of sulfur, but after a short examination, Yerin said the falling water should be safe to drink.
While Lindon took his own turn inspecting the water, Yerin nudged him. “Looks like we won’t be alone after all,” she said, pointing to the cliff wall.
Mud-brown crabs the size of dogs clung to the rock, so dark that they almost blended into the black rock. At first he only saw the one she’d pointed out, but his Jade sense weighed on him until he could feel more sets of eyes on him. He looked more closely, and realized that dozens of the crabs were clustered all over the wall.
As if it had sensed the attention of humans, one of the crabs peeled its legs away and scuttled down the wall, sliding into the pool beneath the waterfall and vanishing.
Lindon scooted away from the water.
“He said we’d find food and water inside,” Yerin said. “Guess we have. I’ll leave it to you to roast one of them up, when we get hungry.”
“Then I’ll leave it to you to bring it down, when the time comes,” Lindon responded. He thought he could capture one, but he couldn’t rid himself of a vision of all those dozens of crabs swarming down the cliff at once, crashing into him like a many-legged wave.
Which made him realize there was no stone to block the cave entrance. He’d have to find a way to keep the giant crabs out while he slept.
Once they had inspected the camp to their satisfaction, they moved back to the red archway.
Yerin and Lindon stood side-by-side, looking through. Beyond was a dense forest of smooth pillars, packed close enough together that Lindon could see nothing else between them but shadows. They stretched up to the height of the rocky cliffs above, where they merged with the black stone.
Just on the other side of the archway, between them and the pillars, there were two other objects.
One, a rectangular slab standing roughly Yerin’s height, was etched with writing and pictures too distant to read. The second was a waist-high pedestal holding a gray crystal ball.
Lindon had left his pack back in the cave, and now he slid off his parasite ring and put it into his pocket next to Suriel’s glass marble. His madra immediately moved more easily with the parasite ring gone, the Blackflame power burning merrily within him.
“This is the first Trial, I’d guess,” Yerin said.
Lindon nodded to the two characters painted on the archway pillar, above the dragon design: ‘Trial One.’
“That, or they’re playing a sadistic trick on us.”
They traded a look and then, together, stepped through the archway. Sure enough, there was a script embedded between the pillars: he could feel it ignite as they stepped forward. Icy power washed over his skin, and then he was through.
He stood before the stone tablet, which was crammed with diagrams and ancient characters. Lindon examined it for a few long breaths, committing segments to memory and wishing he’d brought paper and ink.
Yerin cleared her throat. “What’s it saying to you?”
Lindon scooted over, making room for her at the tablet. He gestured to the outline of a man, filled entirely with intricate loops. “This looks like the madra pattern for their Enforcer technique.” He brushed dust from the four characters comprising the name. “Black…fire…fierce…outer robe?”
“That has a nice sound to it, doesn’t it? The legendary Black Fire Fierce Outer Robe technique.”
“Well, what would you call it?”
With a thumb, she rubbed a scar on her chin. “Couldn’t tell you. Can’t read a word of it.”
She sounded defiant, as though daring him to make a comment about it, but he was immediately ashamed. “Forgiveness. I was fortunate enough to learn the basic characters of the old language as a child. It’s not so different from our language, though it looks much more complicated. You see—”
He was about to point out some of those similarities when she interrupted him. “Doesn’t make a lick of difference. Can’t read my own name.”
Lindon stared at her for too long
before realizing how awkward that must be for her, then he shifted his gaze and pretended he’d been examining the stone all along. “That’s…ah, I’m sorry. Did the Sword Sage not…”
“Not much writing to be done with a sword,” she said, in a deliberately casual tone.
In the Wei clan, everyone learned to read before they learned their first Foundation technique. But it fell to the individual families to teach their children; he’d never considered what it might be like for someone raised outside a family.
“Well, ah…this section at the top is a simple sequence. It explains the history of the Blackflames.”
His fingers brushed the vertical lines of writing, each column separated by pictograms: a dragon flying over a human, then a human standing over a dragon, then a human with a dragon on a leash.
“When the humans came to this land, the dragons ruled. They burned through all opposition, ignoring all defenses. No one could stand against them. Finally, a...I think this means 'great disaster'...came to this land from the west, bringing the dragons down from the sky.”
That was interesting; Sacred Valley and the Desolate Wilds lay to the west. There were no pictures illustrating the great disaster, to his disappointment.
“Once they fell, the humans began to learn the sacred arts of the dragons. It helped to even the score, but their understanding was incomplete. While they were still studying the arts, the dragons discovered a way to...”
Lindon hesitated. “It says here they leashed the humans, but it seems to imply that the humans were the ones to benefit. Maybe a deal? A contract.”
Understanding sparked. The first Blackflames, at least, had bound themselves to the dragons just as he had done with Orthos.
“Some Paths bind their kids to sacred beasts,” Yerin said. “It’s like gluing a sword to your hand so you don’t drop it, if you ask me.”
Lindon spent a moment wondering if she was trying to insult him before he realized she didn’t know. He hadn’t seen her since making his contract with Orthos…who was drifting around the mountain as the mood took him. If Lindon wasn’t mistaken, Orthos would probably check on him before he finished the Trials.
“Not to ask too much of you, but if you happen to see a giant, flaming turtle wandering around out here…please don’t attack it.”
Yerin stared at him like he’d started babbling nonsense.
“Well,” Lindon continued, “it seems that the remaining dragons linked themselves to the Blackflame ancestors for some reason. With the power of the dragons...”
He tapped a picture of a man with a dragon standing over a large crowd of humans, and Yerin nodded. “Yeah, I can figure that one.”
There was a line of text just beneath the story, separated from everything else. These words were engraved more deeply, so the passage of time had hardly touched them.
“The dragon advances,” he said aloud.
“That’s a long stretch better than ‘Fierce Robe Burning Fire,’ true?”
“It’s not a technique name. It looks like their family words, or maybe the philosophy of the Trial.”
Yerin looked bored, so he moved down to the next section.
“Now it's talking about the Trials, and the language gets harder. The Blackflame ancestors placed three Trials here for the three basic techniques of the Path, that much is clear. This one is the...you know, the Fierce Fire Robe. It's their Enforcer technique. Seems like it burns...”
He trailed off.
“You'd expect fire madra to burn,” Yerin said.
“No, that's...ah, it seems to burn away the body of the user.” He searched his mind for another interpretation, but came up with nothing. That would explain why Eithan thought he needed the Bloodforged Iron body to handle the Path, but he wasn't exactly enthusiastic about burning himself from the inside out.
“That's a gem for you, isn't it?” Yerin asked. “If a technique costs you something, means it must be a good one.”
Lindon grunted noncommittally and gestured to the smoky crystal ball on the pedestal. “I'm supposed to run the technique through the crystal, and that will activate the Trial. Apologies, but it looks like we can't move on until I’m familiar with it.”
She folded her arms. “I'll wait.”
He looked from the madra diagram to her. “This could take me days.”
“Really?” Yerin tapped a knuckle against the illustration of the madra channels. “This?”
The diagram seemed to require him to make dozens of small directions and adjustments to his madra flow with every breath. To use it without thought in a fight would take him months.
“I defer to your experience,” he said, “but I think three or four days is reasonable.”
Yerin slid her sword around on her belt, then plopped down to the ground. She patted the dirt in front of her. “I'll be buried and rotten if I let you take days for something that simple. Have a seat, I'll walk you through it.”
Lindon took one final glance at the diagram and then sat with his back to the stone, his knees against Yerin's. Once again, he wished he'd brought paper and ink; tracing the madra pattern would have helped commit it to memory.
“Do what I tell you, when I tell you, you hear me?” When Lindon nodded, Yerin straightened her back. “Close your eyes.”
He did so.
“We're keeping this to a crawl, now. Deep breath in, and picture your madra running like tree roots through your whole body. You inhale, and the roots spread.”
It was the same sort of visualization Eithan had mentioned while teaching him the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel. He followed along, and his madra responded with surprising ease.
“Exhale, and burn it all up. There's a fire consuming those roots, you're burning them, and that fire is the fuel that drives you.”
When Lindon focused on the fire, it was as though the Blackflame madra leaped forward like a hungry beast. It spread from his spirit and sunk into his body, but the sensation was painless, just a hot and disturbing tingle as though his muscles were slowly fizzing away to nothing.
He opened his eyes. “As expected of the Sword Sage’s disciple,” he said, saluting her with fists pressed together. “I almost felt it work. A few more tries, and I think…what?”
She was wearing a smug smile. “Almost?” The silver blade over her shoulder inched forward, leaving a polished steel surface in front of his face. “Do it with your eyes open this time.”
It was harder to picture his madra flow with his eyes open, so this attempt took him longer. But this time he was watching when his madra flared and the tingling sensation washed through his veins.
The reflection of his face was suddenly blurred by a haze of red-and-black fire.
Lindon almost fell backwards.
Yerin gestured to him. “That covers you all over, like burning smoke. It's got a menacing look to it, I'll tell you true. Jai Long will have to bring a diaper to the fight.”
He rose to his feet. “How? So quickly?”
She drew her sword so that she could reach the stone tablet with its tip, pointing to little symbols next to the madra pattern. Lindon had taken them for reading directions in the ancient script.
“Can't read a word, but you'd see these pictures on most old Path manuals. I had more talks about cycling theory with my master than we had hot meals.” She shrugged. “You're just moving your own spirit around, aren't you? The feeling does you more good than remembering some directions.”
She'd left her Goldsign in place as a mirror, so Lindon flared the technique again. This time, he got a clearer look: a thin aura of black and red rose around him in a haze of power. He would be shrouded in Blackflame madra when he used this technique.
“What does it do?”
“Ask your...stone book, there.” She scratched her nose, then added, “But I could take a guess. Looks to me like a basic full-body Enforcement. Works different depending on your madra, but basically every Path has something like it. Your body's protected and powered by ma
dra while you use it, until you run out of madra or have to drop it.”
He studied the stone, which seemed to agree with her. As far as he could tell. “If it's so simple, then why did they record it here?”
“You're asking me, but who am I supposed to ask? Not every Path has complicated techniques—sometimes they're stone simple, and it's all about how you use them. Or maybe this was the Trial they gave to Copper kids.”
From the tone of the tablet, Lindon doubted this was something so frivolous as a playground for children. And Eithan would never have sent him somewhere easy, he was sure of that.
Lindon flared the aura again, trying to see how long the sensation of painless, corrosive heat would last. He couldn't hold it longer than a blink before the technique fell apart; he'd need to work on keeping his madra control steady and predictable. “It protects me, you say?”
“It Enforces you—figure you know what that means by now. But every Path’s madra does something different. You'll have to play around with it.” She hopped up, brushing her knees clean. “Hit me.”
He looked at her sword.
“Got to try out your shiny new technique, don't you? Hit me.”
Not for a moment did Lindon think he'd hurt her. Quite the opposite, in fact: he was worried her counterattack would slice off his arm. “I will do as you say, then. Excuse me.”
The technique flared, and as soon as he felt the heat and saw the black-and-red haze around his body, he kicked off from the dirt. He'd been used to Enforcing himself with pure madra, and he had a sense of how strong his Iron body could be.
When he kicked off, it sent a pain flaring in his knees. The ground exploded behind him and wind rushed by his ears as he launched into the air.
Lindon had an instant to scream before he slammed face-first into the packed dirt a dozen feet behind Yerin.
Dirt ground into his eyes, into his lips, between his teeth. His body slapped down to the earth a second behind his head, and a brief moment passed before he could lift his face enough to spit out a mouthful of dirt.